


Summer Lovin’

by Omnicat



Series: Pumpkin Spice Lemons [1]
Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Beach Sex, Double Penetration in Two Holes, F/M, Getting Together, Hemipenis, Lemon, Merman Garcia Flynn, Merpeople, Porn With Plot, Pre-Canon, Sea Monsters, Summer Romance, Urban Fantasy, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:47:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26739847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omnicat/pseuds/Omnicat
Summary: Of all the beaches in Croatia, Lorena Selak walks onto Garcia Flynn’s. Lucky, because he can tell her everything she wants to know before deciding whether or not to take a ride on a sea serpent.That’s not a euphemism – at least, at first.
Relationships: Lorena/Flynn
Series: Pumpkin Spice Lemons [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1946326
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	Summer Lovin’

**Author's Note:**

> If you’re anything like me you’ve already been earwormed anyway, but here, have some [Grease](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaX28UJYAsA) as a soundtrack! ‘Grmljavina’ means ‘thunder’ in Croatian. [Ćevapčići](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%86evapi) is a grilled minced meat dish. And I got Lorena’s last name from [Frane Selak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frane_Selak), who is a real person. Because seriously. _Seriously._

Like many second-generation immigrants, Lorena Selak’s relationship to her ancestral homeland wasn’t the most straightforward.

Her grandparents on both sides had emigrated to America from Croatia; the Selaks long before her mother was born, the Vučkovićs when her father was a baby. Her mother’s family proceeded to put down roots immediately, while her father’s bounced around from place to place until grandma and grandpa Vučković eventually moved back to Croatia. But Lorena’s parents had met by then (being the only two Croatian families in a relatively small town made introductions inevitable, apparently), so he stayed behind.

Her father always said he would’ve liked for her to learn Croatian, but in a half-hearted sort of way. He never spent enough time raising her to do any actual teaching. Her mother was Americanized to the point that she didn’t care at all. Grandma and grandpa Selak were openly and intensely nostalgic despite how thoroughly they’d assimilated. Grandma and grandpa Vučković came over for the holiday season every few years, spoiling her rotten and forgetting every time that she couldn’t understand a word of what they said unless they switched to English. Lorena’s parents had never taken her to see _them_ across the sea, though.

Lorena herself thought it all sounded like a fairytale when she was a child, got thoroughly annoyed with the entire subject as a teenager, and grew up to regard her roots with a wistful kind of dissatisfaction. It almost made her wish her upbringing hadn’t been so wishy-washy about how much she ‘should’ care about it. If her family had been more insistent about or preoccupied with it, or treated it as anything other than a cool club they were always bringing up but could never be bothered to actually introduce her to, she was sure she would’ve made up her mind about it by now _one_ way or another.

But everything she knew about Croatia came from books and stories.

Her best friend in high school had always been sighing over historical and science fiction novels, telling her she’d been born in the wrong century. She wasn’t even picky; she thought basically _any_ other time would’ve been more exciting than the present. Lorena, though a far more content person in general, felt a little like that sometimes. Except Croatia wasn’t locked away behind the passage of time. It wasn’t inaccessible at all. She could book a plane or an albatross there any time she wanted. Hell, she could commission a personal two-way teleportation, if she was feeling fancy.

And one day she reached an age where she looked at her savings and said to herself, you know what? _Why not._ So she went.

She didn’t even tell her parents, didn’t want them coming along and overshadowing her experience with their own baggage. She just packed her suitcase, bought a basic translation spell for tourists to put on a battered old thumb ring, and booked that albatross. (Planes were faster and easier, but if she was going to fly for the first time, she’d do it in style.) (Okay, and she changed the message on her answering machine. She wasn’t a _completely_ reckless jerk.)

The plan was simple, and flexible: one month in Croatia. One week of family visits, one week of sightseeing, one week of beach, and one week of leeway for all the rest.

She started with the family visits. Grandma and grandpa Vučković were ecstatic to see her and introduced her to everybody they knew. The Selak side of the family was significantly smaller, and both more surprised and more reserved. Her grandparents had left over thirty years ago, and nobody on this side of the Atlantic had seen Lorena’s mother since she was a girl, or Lorena herself ever. It was good to meet everybody, though, however briefly for some of them, and to find so many new faces she recognized her own features in. It lifted a weight from Lorena’s shoulders she’d never even realized she was carrying.

The sightseeing was breathtaking. She kept having to buy new rolls of film. And being offered strangers’ handkerchiefs. She could have kept leafing through her traveling guide for more places to visit for the entirety of her trip, but after seven days of non-stop travel, a short break to swim and sunbathe was definitely in order. She took the first coast-bound oxtrain and left it up to fate where she ended up.

Fate must have liked her chutzpah, because it brought her to Garcia Flynn.

The beach was a beautiful, flawless curve of golden sand. The weather was amazing. The sun protection spell she’d had cast over her hat was worth every penny. Lorena spread out her towel a little ways away from the rock formation at one end of the beach, and the wide straw brim of the hat also proved perfect for peeking at the local shoal of handsome mermen and pretty, topless mermaids (twelve points to Europe in general and Croatia in particular) congregated on and around the rocks. They talked and laughed and splashed and warmed themselves on the stones, practically glittering in the sun. There was one in particular – a guy with black hair that kept falling into his eyes and a long, deep red tail – who Lorena could have sworn kept sneaking looks at her too.

She should’ve bet money on it, because on her third day of swimming and browsing the shops and lazing and reading in the sun, he proved her right.

On the other end of the beach was a wooden pier, and every day an old woman and her grandson set up a parasol and a little stall at the end to sell rides on a giant silvery sea creature. Curious, Lorena wandered over. She couldn’t quite place the creature. It seemed healthy, and cheerful enough. But Lorena had read enough news stories about pegasus exploitation and werefolk fighting rings and the like in America recently to worry.

Out loud, apparently (a habit she’d found herself falling into this past week or so), because a heavily accented voice told her:

"You don’t have to worry about that, you know. She’s a juvenile sea serpent. If anybody tried to exploit her, she’d bite them in half and round up a bunch of her older and bigger cousins to ruin all our ports."

Startled, Lorena looked around, found nobody on the pier anywhere near her, and then looked down. And yep. There was the red-tailed merman, treading water. He was even cuter up close, and he gave her a jaunty wave.

"Hi."

"Hi," Lorena answered, grinning. "Is that what she is? I didn’t think sea serpents came in that size! Or so not spiky."

Through the crystal clear water, she saw him wrap his tail around the nearest post, and he reached up to hook his arm around a crossbeam. It raised him up out of the water with ease.

"Yeah, the little ones don’t usually venture up to the surface by day," he said. "But she bit the head off a witch’s wicked stepfather once, and in thanks he enchanted her eyes to tolerate sunlight better. She’s been a town staple ever since. For centuries now. Local legend has it her mother created this beach with her own body, because she liked to rest her head on those rocks over there and kept wriggling until the rest of the coast was rearranged to her liking."

"That’s amazing." Lorena crouched down and tilted her hat back. "You from around here?"

"Yeah. Garcia Flynn." He clambered the rest of the way up the pier, sat down beside her, and held out his hand. "Nice to meet you."

"Huh." Shaking the proffered hand and smiling, she cocked her head. "That doesn’t sound very Croatian for someone who sounds so Croatian."

He shrugged. "Long story. And you are?"

"Lorena Selak."

Grinning, he cocked his head right back at her. "That’s funny, your _voice_ doesn’t sound very Croatian."

"Well, that’s not a long story at all. My grandparents moved to the States a long time ago and this is the first time I’ve been to see their home country."

"Ah, a salmon," Garcia said, with an air of enlightenment that made Lorena laugh.

"Pretty much!"

"Anyway, definitely take the serpent ride. You’d be doing Grmljavina a favor," Garcia said.

Lorena tripped over her tongue. "Gr–?"

"Grmljavina," he repeated patiently.

She decided to skip trying that for now. No need to own up to the full depth of her shameful failing all at once. "The old woman?"

"The sea serpent." He leaned in conspiratorially and stage-whispered: "I wouldn’t call her old if I were you. She’s only four-hundred something."

She shot a faux-furtive look at the end of the pier, where the serpent was just dropping off her latest passengers. They looked soaked and windswept and delighted by it. "Oh, I wouldn’t dare. I feel like she’d bite my head off for my attempts at pronouncing her name alone."

"Nah," Garcia said. "Grmljavina is just what us locals call her. Even under water I couldn’t pronounce her real name. For foreigners, she answers to ‘Mistress of the Storms’ too."

Lorena snickered. "What about for salmon?"

"I’ll put in a good word for you," he promised, eyes twinkling. "You’ll have nothing to worry about."

"Why thank you. But what’s this about doing sea serpents favors?"

"Ah. Our Grmljavina is saving up for a giant, waterproof, pressure-resistant cold forge. She’s inherited this huge hoard of sunken treasure from her grandmother, you see, and she’s a creative soul. She wants to convert part of her share of the gold and silver and everything into art of her own design."

"Wow," Lorena said, wholeheartedly.

"Us coastal creatures aren’t the only ones modernizing," Garcia said. He grinned and pointed. "You see the old woman and her grandson helping Grmljavina out? Grmljavina saved her from drowning as a little girl and they’ve been the best of friends since. But Grmljavina’s grandparents’ generation used to keep humans as pets in the Bronze Age."

"What? How?" Lorena’s eyes went wide.

"The same way we keep pretty fish in aquariums. They’d claim a little island as their territory, kidnap some humans they liked the looks of, bring food and toys and stuff to keep them healthy, and then sat back and enjoyed the view."

She stared at him. "You’re making this up."

"I’m not, I swear!" he laughed. "If anybody’s making it up, it’s Grmljavina. But there’s plenty of historical records and archeological findings to back it up, so..."

"Oh my god." Laughing too, she hid her face in her hands and peeked at the sea serpent, who was currently lounging with her massive head resting on the end of the pier, through her fingers. "Do, uh..."

"People ever go missing from a serpent ride?" Garcia asked knowingly. He grinned and assured her: "No. But if you’re worried, I could always come with you as back-up? I throw a mean punch."

Lorena lowered her hands, rested her elbows on her knees, and studied him.

"You’re flirting with me," she concluded.

For a moment, Garcia looked like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Then he shrugged. "Maybe. If you want me to be."

She pretended to think about it. "Well, so far I’m not _against_ it."

So far she hadn’t seen him look anything but pleasant, but his smile then was blinding compared to anything that came before. It made butterflies erupt in Lorena’s stomach, and she found herself responding in kind.

"Okay! Then it’s my treat."

Lorena couldn’t help but look him up and down. Him in all his socially acceptable buck-ass nude glory. He had a large scar on his belly (it looked like someone had literally tried to gut him like a fish, Lorena thought with a mental wince both at that thought and at the sight), and enough hair on his forearms to look incongruous on a merman. More relevantly, though, the only stitch of ‘clothing’ on him was a beautiful banded cockle shell on a pale leather cord around his neck.

"You have money on you?" she asked, raising an eyebrow in playful scepticism.

He made a dismissive gesture. "Eh, Grmljavina and the Ćosić family both know where I live. When she can rear up and flatten you in your bed without getting her tail dry, you get to put it on a tab."

The old lady instructed her to leave her hat, shoes, bag, and any jewelry not spelled in place behind, and Lorena realized it was a good thing she’d put on her frayed jean shorts and purple and pink flower-print swimsuit that day instead of the palm tree bikini or her gorgeous new wrap with the traditional Croatian patterns. One of them spending this ride naked was plenty. And the precautions were definitely not exaggerated. Grmljavina had a saddle-like harness for them to hold onto, fastened between two sets of long, trailing fins. She carried Lorena and Garcia out to deeper water at a sedate enough pace, but once there, she threw back her head, screeched joyfully (the signal for her passengers to take a deep breath), and went wild. She jumped and dove and rolled and raced. Lorena screamed herself hoarse with excitement. They got thrown off multiple times, Grmljavina screeching with laughter every time. Garcia kept offering to help her back up, and even though she could’ve easily done it herself, Lorena let him.

(She kind of suspected the sea serpent of doing it on purpose after a while, but she didn’t mind at all.)

After that, they spent the rest of the day together, Lorena eventually repaying Garcia for he serpent ride by ordering ćevapčići with fries and onion for them both when one of the restaurants on the boulevard sent a waiter down to the beach to ask the group of merfolk if they wanted anything.

"Usually one of us puts on legs and goes into town for food, but..." He scanned his group of friends in the light of the setting sun and made an ‘oops’ face. "Yeah, everybody who could have done so left already. And I was with you. Oh, well. We’ve been going to that restaurant all summer for years, they know where to find us when this happens."

Garcia introduced her to his friends, and they greeted Lorena warmly but teased him ruthlessly.

"See, there you go again!" a tentacled girl with her mouth full of grilled meat crowed. "You have a nose for the salmons and the ones with one fin in another ocean. When is your buddy Stiv Casey visiting again, huh?"

"They never look any different from the other tourists to me, but birds of a feather..." a guy with pearly white scales needled. (Franjo? Branko? Gah, too many names all at once.) He turned to Lorena and pointed at her with his fork for emphasis. "He once –"

But Garcia dove for her hand and hurriedly pulled the enchanted ring from her finger. Everything the guy said immediately turned back to Croatian. Garcia held her ring up, shook his head, and said something that probably boiled down to ‘nope, not happening, she can’t hear you without this!’. Lorena laughed.

Branko-or-Franjo gave Garcia an unimpressed look and told Lorena, in an even thicker accent than Garcia’s: "He also always forgets that we speak English fine too, just because he grew up speaking it and could always sleep through the class in school. So, as I was saying..."

Garcia dropped his head into his hands. Lorena almost dropped her food in the sea, she laughed so hard.

They spent the next day together too. And the next.

He told her the ‘long story’ of his convoluted family tree when they met up again the second morning. His Hispanic-American mother who came to work in Yugoslavia in the middle of the Cold War; his paternal grandfather from England and his Jewish Croatian grandmother, who met wandering Europe during the Second World War; how having a twice-foreign name despite never really feeling like anything but a Croat made things weird for Garcia himself, especially in the Homeland War.

"That wasn’t that complicated," she assured him.

He shrugged. "Maybe. But it _feels_ complicated, you know?"

"Yeah." She took his hand and squeezed it. "I get that."

On the third afternoon, they had laid out Lorena’s towel on Garcia’s favorite rock and were watching thready little clouds pass by overhead as the sun began to set, their heads craned up and their shoulders brushing.

"Are there beaches where you live?" he asked, suddenly and quietly.

"I grew up within walking distance of one, yeah. Why, will you migrate to visit me after I leave, like a salmon during mating season?" she teased, though she felt her face flush. Even to holiday romance standards, it was far too early for such thoughts, on both their sides. But she couldn’t help it. And with a question like that, it was hard not to think it was on his mind too.

He rolled his eyes. "No, planes are much faster, duh. Besides, I love flying."

Lorena’s eyebrows shot up.

"What, I can’t love flying just because I’m a fish?" he asked, entirely too innocently.

"Oh, I’m sure you can. It’s just that it’s going to be hard for a man with no pants to board a commercial airliner. I think even albatross flights insist on pants, and you know how _they_ are."

That startled a laugh out of him. " _What?_ Why would you think I don’t have any pants?"

Lorena struggled to keep a straight face. "Before you started hanging out with me, I saw you sunning yourself on this exact rock all day every day. I kind of figured you live here."

"Oh, that." He laughed a little harder and raked a hand through his hair self-consciously. "You saw that?"

"Of course." Before, she hadn’t wanted to get her hopes up that he was noticeably less likely to take a dive or disappear altogether than the rest of his friends while she was around _because_ she was around. Now? She was pretty convinced. And it was adorable. She nudged his shoulder and whispered: "Kind of wondered if you could actually move. You looked a little like a barnacle there."

As if to prove that yes, he could move, he flashed his fins through the waves constantly rolling up against their rock, and deposited a scoop of sea water right in her face. Shrieking with laughter, Lorena curled in on herself protectively.

"Or a beached whale!"

Garcia Flynn, Lorena was fast learning, made the best faces. His expression of over the top indignation had her in stitches.

Giggling, she patted his chest and offered: "One that’s been beached for so long it’s starving to death?"

"I am not skinny," he told her, wagging a finger at her. "I am exactly as well-fed as I should be. But if you’re worried about me starving, you could just take me out to dinner, you know."

She gave him a considering look. "I probably should, shouldn’t I?"

"Definitely."

"Okay. It’s a date."

Her nice dress was a little wrinkled from being abandoned at the bottom of her suitcase for three weeks, but it was embroidered in white and blue and ochre all over, so it was barely noticeable once she put it on. She just hoped it wasn’t too much; she usually wore this dress and her matching beaded moccasins to weddings and the like. She washed the salt from her hair, gave her curls a boost with her favorite potion, and put on make-up for the first time since she left her grandparents’ house.

He’d given her the name of a restaurant nowhere near the beach. She wondered what ‘putting on legs’ would mean, in Garcia’s case. There were so many possibilities: shapeshifting, levitation, enchanted puppet legs you strapped on and moved like an extra set of limbs, those wheeled walker contraptions that were popular in uptown San Francisco, portable tubs...

Lorena took a deep breath and tried to steady her ridiculous nerves. There was no reason to be this nervous. They’d eaten out together the past couple of nights too. This was barely half a degree of formality above that, really.

Someone tapped her shoulder, ruining all her efforts at keeping cool by making her jump. She whirled around – and felt her jaw drop.

Garcia stood before her on two flesh and blood legs. He was smartly dressed in white and red and black, with an embroidered shirt and boots that made her glad she hadn’t gone for something more casual herself. His hair was neatly combed and side-parted. More importantly, though –

"Wow, you’re tall on land!"

"And they’re my own legs, too," he said, nodding sagely and patting his knee. "All natural, no customized magic. You know, since you’re in an easily impressed mood anyway."

Lorena bit her lip to suppress a grin.

"The clothes, though..." she teased, plucking at the collar of his shirt. "No. Doesn’t suit you at all. Take them off."

Laughing, he ducked out of range. "Not in front of a crowd, but feel free to hold that thought. You look nice too."

They went in and ordered, and Lorena had to ask.

"So, do you have your own place on land, or is it more like a friend’s couch where you get to keep some dry stuff?"

"I grew up in the city, further inland, but my grandparents were from here. For as long as I remember, I spent every weekend and school vacation here. When they passed, they left the house to me."

Well, that answer went from ‘I probably shouldn’t be so surprised’ to ‘ouch’ fast. Lorena winced in sympathy. Garcia heaved a deep breath, pasted on a smile, and ploughed on with:

"And my father left me the long legs, and my mother my tail and love of flying. When she still lived in America, she worked for the company that sent the first men to the moon, you know?"

"Wow," Lorena said weakly.

"Yeah. Kinda wondering how I’m ever gonna top that!"

"I’m so sorry for your loss," she said.

He waved it away a little too energetically. "They were great while I had them, that’s what matters."

The gentleman doth protest too much, anyone with eyes could’ve seen it. But Lorena knew they hadn’t known each other anywhere near long enough for her to pursue a topic like this when he clearly didn’t want her to make a big deal of it. Mercifully, the waiter chose that moment to bring them their drinks and a basket of bread sticks. She took advantage of the break in the conversation to switch back to a safer track.

"So with one root in each world, you’re the shapeshifting type of merman? I hear that’s usually how that works?" she said, sipping her mineral water.

"For three or four generations, yeah, before the blood settles on one side or the other," he said. "Though it’s less that I _can_ shapeshift – though I _can_ do it voluntarily – and more that shapeshifting _happens to me_ at the drop of a hat. It’s a real pain in the ass to tear out of your pants and have your legs fuse together in the marketplace because it started raining a little, you know?"

She laughed. "I can only imagine."

"So I wear my shell or this amulet at all times." He pulled a leather cord out from underneath his shirt – dark brown this time, unlike the one with the shell – and showed her the bronze amulet that hung from it. It was inlaid with tiny, intricate knots of magically evergreen grass. "Binds me to one shape for as long as I want. Does your cat pendant do anything?"

Lorena’s hand went to her own necklace. She hadn’t worn it around him before. Most of her jewelry was at least semi-functional, spell-carrying stuff, but this one was purely sentimental. Having it enchanted like it was just any old convenient wearable would have felt sacrilegious. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing it in the water – or having it stolen. It was solid gold, with eyes inlaid with obsidian and green cat’s eye, and a ruby for a nose. The only time the Selak side of the family had ever reached out to her was by sending her this family heirloom as a coming-of-age present.

"No, it’s is more like a family emblem. Nobody in my mother’s line has died of anything but old age in recorded history, even when they really should have. We suspect it’s some kind of mystical feline ancestry thing. Nine lives, and all that. So Bastet is our goddess."

"Convenient!"

"Definitely. My great-uncle Frane made international news once with all the times he escaped death. Maybe you heard?"

"No, but do tell me," he said, leaning forward on his elbows and smiling brightly. "The more you humanize yourself, the more likely I am to forget we’re apparently natural enemies."

Miming swatting at him with a clawed hand, she laughed.

Every day Lorena spent with Garcia seemed to end on that part of the beach where she’d first spotted him. Five days before she was scheduled to leave, they had dinner, danced for hours, stumbled out of the club near midnight, and headed to the beach to cool down and burn off their excess energy. They left their clothes in the sand (Garcia shedding a layer more than Lorena, who definitely did not try and fail to sneak a peak through her fingers) and she waded into the sea, while he took three steps and proceeded to flop face-first into the water as his tail came in.

Giggling, Lorena took his hands and pulled him along until the water was deep enough for him to move comfortably. He kissed her hands in thanks – and promptly yanked her down into the waves. Traitor. He ducked under the water to escape her extremely dangerous retaliatory splash. She followed, and he resurfaced, and together they struck out through the moon-streaked waves.

This late at night, the beach and the sea were both deserted. Ordinarily Lorena wouldn’t have dreamed of going swimming in the dark, but it was hard to feel very concerned about drowning with an amorous merman brushing up against you. The water was a perfect way to freshen up and unwind after the heat and crowds of the club. At this time of night, though, it was no longer warm enough for a human to stay submerged for long. So after a while they headed for Garcia’s favorite rock formation, and he guided her to a safe spot where the sea’s push and pull wouldn’t toss her into any sharp outcrops.

"Thanks," she said, leaning against the smooth stone and wiping her hair from her face. Smirking, she nudged his tail with her foot. "You’re really in love with this rock, aren’t you?"

It was two days to the full moon, so Lorena had no trouble making out Garcia’s grin. "It’s a pretty great rock."

As if to demonstrate its many positive qualities, he lifted her out of the water, sat her down on the flattened top, pushed himself up on his hands, and kissed her. His mouth tasted of the salt that flowed through his gills as they swam, but his breath still held a hint of the fruity drinks they’d had at the club. Even more than that, though, the heat of him stood out to her. Before meeting Garcia, Lorena would have guessed merfolk to be cold-blooded creatures, their bodies guarded against losing too much heat to the greedy embrace of the ocean. Maybe they all did it, or maybe he was a little different because of his human father and being a shapeshifter gave him a chameleon-like ability to adjust, but she’d noticed that the dryer he was, the warmer he got, and one touch from her was all it took for heat to bloom and linger on skin previously cool as a fish’s.

She’d ask him about it. Later. Now, she kissed him, over and over, deep and wet interspersed with soft, sweet brushes.

"You’re right," she broke away to pant, and then kissed him again. Her hands cupped his cheeks. "It _is_ a great rock."

His arms were braced on either side of her legs, but his waist rested against the stone between her knees. Lorena lay back and pulled him up and over her. Her legs opened wider, until his solid weight pressed flush to her body.

He swallowed a moan but let a curse slip. "Careful. I can’t keep it in my pants with no pants on."

"Good," she decided.

Lorena didn’t usually move this fast. Scratch that, she’d never gotten comfortable with another person this fast in her life. She couldn’t help but wonder what it was about Garcia. Sure, they’d spent almost the entirety of their acquaintance so far in various states of undress. Sure, by next week, there would be an ocean separating them. But there was something special about him that had nothing to do with his body or the ticking of the clock or even how hard he made her laugh. More and more, she was starting to feel like she’d known him for a hundred lifetimes, and what they were doing wasn’t so much getting to know each other in this one as unearthing those memories and slotting them back into their rightful places.

Rolling into bed with someone she’d known for barely a week wasn’t how her parents had raised her, but following her gut _was_. They said everyone had at least one spark of magic in them that was all their own, regardless of the blood in their veins, the stars they were born under, or the High Ones that laid claim over them. These little glimmers of Knowing were Lorena’s, she was sure.

Garcia didn’t quite have a butt right now for her to hook her ankles behind for leverage, but that didn’t stop her from trying. Legs wrapped around his waist, she ground up against him as their mouths met again and again. Her bikini might as well not have existed for all the barrier it provided. Her pebbled nipples rubbed against his chest and it only took her imagination (and, okay, her feverish anticipation) a hot second to identify the sensation against her groin as his slit parting as an erection started to form.

"Lorena," he panted urgently. "Lorena."

"Garcia," she panted back.

"No, I mean –" He withdrew, leaving the sea breeze to chill her skin and hiding the evidence of his arousal in the shadow between their bodies. She made a bereft noise. He looked lost for words for a moment. "I don’t know how much you know about merfolk. Don’t be alarmed, okay? I have two."

"Penises?" Lorena asked immediately.

He gave her an odd look. Woopsie. So much for not looking over-eager.

"Yes."

Since playing it cool was out of the question already, Lorena (carefully) let her head drop to the rock and groaned, "Oh fuck yes, I was hoping that wasn’t just an urban myth."

"So you’re comfortable with that?" The look he gave her turned odder.

"If I were any _more_ comfortable with it I’d probably feel bad about taking advantage of you or something," she told him frankly.

He took a moment to process that. Then he grinned, even though his tongue darted out in a tell-tale sign of him trying to play it cool about something.

"So you want to do this here...?"

"Yes."

"Because we can dry off and go to my house or your hotel room if it doesn’t work, you know? I’ve heard the positioning can get weird when one person has a tail and the other has legs. They say the second one doesn’t fit unless you stretch for ages, so it gets squished in between, or –"

"Garcia," she cut him off, running a hand down his chest. The half-jokey rambling was adorable, but he was wasting it on all the wrong things. "You have two guests. I have two doors."

He blinked. Cocked his head, parted his lips. Then his eyes went wide. "Oh. _Oh._ "

"If you’re comfortable with that," Lorena teased.

"Uh... yeah, sure, of course. Why didn’t I think of that." He let out an incredulous laugh. "Wow."

Mock-pouting, she shoved his shoulder. "Don’t act so shocked."

"Not shocked, this just isn’t something I’ve ever..." He met her eyes and trailed off. "Oh, never mind."

His kiss, this time, was hungry and ferocious and turned Lorena’s blood to fire. She returned it in kind. He pushed the flimsy cups of her bikini down so her breasts spilled out; she temporarily unwrapped herself from around him and managed to worm and bend and stretch one leg out of her bottoms. Her entire body was flushed with need, and then – oh, the look in Garcia’s eyes as he took her in, laid out beneath him bare and ready and waiting, it was indescribable.

Butterflies burst in her stomach. She liked this man, so very much. Wanted him so badly. And maybe tonight...

Bracing himself on one hand, he ran the other down her side and squeezed the soft curve of her hip. "Do you have – ?"

"I’ve been wearing my protective earrings for three days, thanks for noticing."

"Oh, come on, I’m not a witch, I can’t tell if something’s enchanted just by looking at it."

She pretended to consider that, made her most innocent face, and said: "You could’ve licked them."

"And my mother taught me never to lick people without their permission," he added with a straight face.

"Oh, you’re waiting for an invitation? Consider yourself invited then."

A beat. Then he made a ‘shrug’ face and he licked her. A big, fat stripe straight up her cheek. Squealing with laughter, Lorena squirmed away and decided that, yes, tonight she would take him back to her room at the hotel, and in the morning she would give him her address and her phone number and leave her heart with him on a silver platter, _knowing_ he would do right by it.

Garcia’s mouth followed her, pressing kisses to the back of her hand, and her wrist, and her forearm where she’d wrapped it around her face, and then to the curve of her shoulder and down her upper arm. When she straightened beneath him and lowered her arm, he moved back to her shoulder and across her clavicles, from one side to the other, only dipping lower on the second pass. She nosed at his wet hair as he went and splayed her hands across the breadth of his back.

The next lick was to her left nipple. The one after that, her right. Warm and wet, he lapped at her breasts, suckled on them, peppered them with kisses and scraped the soft swell of them with his teeth before sucking red marks into her skin. He moved on from each blotch well before the color could set, but Lorena amused herself with the thought of waking up tomorrow morning with a chest that looked like an octopus had gone to town on it.

She sank her hands into Garcia’s hair, sighed and gasped and panted in appreciation, and clenched around nothing. Perhaps she’d subconsciously tightened her legs around his chest, because while one of his hands kneaded the breast his mouth couldn’t cover, his other found her center and slid between her lower lips as if in answer. She was wet already, and his exploration of her only made her more so. He found her clitoris with his thumb and gave it a welcoming rub. He ran his fingers up and down her slit and buried them between her folds a little deeper on every pass, until they found her opening. As one long finger sank into her, his thumb returned to her clit, and sweet glorious gods, he knew his way around a human woman too, could he get any more perfect?

Cupping his jaw with both hands, she pulled his head up toward her and kissed him hard and deep. Her tongue thrust and curled into him as his fingers – first one, then two, eventually three – thrust and curled into her. He didn’t forget her clit for a moment, and when she finally let up it was because impending orgasm stole her breath and her coordination, and for long moments all she could do was bury a hitching cry into his neck and let waves of pleasure jerk on the strings controlling her body.

He rubbed her all the way through it, only removing his thumb when she shoved his shoulder and collapsed beneath him, gulping for breath. Somewhere along the way he’d stopped paying attention to her breasts entirely, but they were still exquisitely, distractingly sensitive as her chest heaved against his. He brushed back her hair and kissed her cheeks as she came down from her high. It was so sweet she felt like she might burst. Instead she clenched her wet and open entrance around nothing again, and shivered.

He rubbed her arm. His fingers were sticky; those were the ones that were inside her just a minute ago. "Are you cold?"

"I’m just getting warmed up for the main course," she said. She kissed the junction of his neck and shoulder. "Unless you’ve changed your mind."

Gods, she hoped not. It had sounded like he’d never taken a woman before the way she wanted him to take her, though, so who knew. He might prefer to save that for a later date after all, cover the basics first and build up to it.

But he just raised himself up on his elbow, stuck his sticky fingers in his mouth, and, sucking on her juices and looking her straight in the eye, shook his head.

Lorena cracked up, she couldn’t help it. Garcia didn’t mind. He just grinned back, pecked her on the mouth, and lowered his hand to the shadow between their bodies. And though she couldn’t make out anything where she really wanted to, the up and down motion of his arm was unmistakable.

"Can I see?" she asked, her fingertips ghosting down his stomach.

Holding himself up on the edge of the rock, he leaned back until the slanted moonlight illuminated his front from head to groin. So soon after an orgasm, the pulse of desire that throbbed through her womanhood at the sight was almost painful. Lorena felt goose bumps rise all over in anticipation.

Garcia’s double members were lightly curved, the bottom one more so than the top. The bottom one was longer, too, and tapered: maybe half as thick at the end as the other one, but half again as fat at the base. The heads had a more pointed shape than Lorena was familiar with from her experience with human men, like the nib of a fountain pen. And the shafts weren’t smooth and veiny like she was used to. Grooves that looked almost like gills spiraled down the entire length of both, glistening.

She reached out, glancing up for his reaction and wrapping her hand around the top one when she found him looking back expectantly. To her surprise, he was slick. Carefully she thumbed the groove, and she felt a secretion slide down the side of her hand and wrist in response.

"Extra lubrication," he said breathlessly. "Better for – for the mermaid, underwater."

"Convenient for me here on land too," she murmured delightedly.

Meeting his eyes, she stuck her thumb into her mouth and licked it until his actual gills flared. If it weren’t for the seawater, she thought, he’d taste just like her.

But while the foreplay and the responses she could get out of Garcia were nice, Lorena had waited long enough. She wanted him inside her. Heartbeat to heartbeat, as her mother would say. Soul to soul and breath to breath.

Hotdog to bun, as Lorena herself liked to think about it. Butter to muffin. Sausage to bacon. Fish stick to... yeah, okay, no.

"Would you like a hand first, or...?" she said, hoping he wouldn’t but feeling it would be impolite not to at least offer, after the foreplay he’d given her.

"No, no, that’s fine," he said breathlessly. "Main course sounds good."

Awesome. His equipment looked amazing and she had every intention of exploring it, but not now. Next time.

"Okay. How do we do this?" she asked. "Usually now would be when I’d grab a pillow to lift up my butt, buuut..."

"I could go hunt down a big sponge?" He saw the look on her face and clarified: "Sea sponge. It’s what they make pillows out of down below."

"How long would that take?" she asked dubiously.

Considering, he wobbled his head from side to side and admitted: "A while. Do we go back to the beach then?"

"I’d rather not get sand all up in my undercarriage. If I scoot over to the edge...?"

"Yeah, that would work. More comfortable for me to crouch in the water than to hang over the edge, too."

So that’s what they did. While she pulled one leg up to her chest, Garcia hoisted the other over his shoulder for leverage, and stroked himself a couple of times with his free hand. Fingers good and slick, he coated her from clit to butt crack.

"The lower one first," he said.

"Yep," she chirped. Then she took a deep breath, relaxed her muscles, changed her mind about the tone she wanted to set here, and breathed, _"Please."_

He positioned himself at her puckered hole and pressed until her resistance gave way. They hadn’t prepared her for him there, but truth be told, Lorena enjoyed but rarely actually _needed_ it, for either opening. And his merman’s anatomy couldn’t have been more perfect for this. It was an easy intrusion, slick and narrow, and his first dozen or so slow, tentative thrusts brought him easily as deep as his fingers were before, nice and comfortable yet also unbearably, exquisitely snug. Lorena’s eyelids fluttered down, heavy with pleasure, and her mouth opened on a gasp and then couldn’t quite seem to close very far or for very long anymore.

"Is this okay?" Garcia asked tightly. "Is it working – feeling good?"

"Aye-aye, captain," she said. Peeking up at him through her lashes, she saluted. "Steady as she goes."

Laughing, he pressed a kiss to her knee. The hand not holding her leg in place on his shoulder had moved to her waist for the moment. He gripped her tight, pulled out of her until only the tip of him was left inside of her, and then thrust back in more forcefully than before.

" _Ah!_ Ooh, yes, like that. Hold _that_ course."

He found a rhythm and held it, retreating and rolling back in like the tide. Lorena had never felt so slick back there. Every thrust seemed to coat her in a little bit more of his lubricant. Every thrust pushed him another increment deeper inside her, too, opening her up a tiny bit further around the ever-widening girth of him. The light curve of the shaft meant the tip rubbed into the back wall of her vagina with every movement, and whatever nerves she had there appreciated it _very_ much. It was good enough to make her forget there was more to come. Before she knew it, he was deep enough for the shorter top shaft to brush up between her lips every time the long bottom one pushed into her.

Slowing the movement of his hips, Garcia moved his hand from the curve of her side to her belly, over her navel. He pressed down – only lightly, but oh, Lorena could feel that inside. Throwing the last of her restraint to the wind, she mewled.

"Ready for the other one?" he asked.

"Can we wait? Just for a little bit. I want to see how deep I can take this one."

Garcia made a strangled noise. "Of course. Anything."

He adjusted his grip on her leg, his movements shortening, his thumb finding her clit. Lorena made a breathy noise of appreciation that turned into a steady stream of half-voiced gasps and pants. He was really throwing his weight into it now. Deeper and deeper he sank, plowing steadily into her, getting her as wet and slick as her body had ever made itself. She thanked every goddess she could think of for how pliant and accommodating her anatomy was tonight, because already she’d never felt so _full_. He was hot and smooth and thick and only getting thicker, until there wasn’t a nerve inside her he wasn’t stroking.

And then he bottomed out. One last thrust and his hips slapped into her buttocks, and there was no further for him to go and no more for her to take. Their eyes met with a look of mutual awe – and need.

Lorena released a shuddering breath. " _Now_ the other one."

Garcia didn’t comply immediately. First he withdrew maybe an inch, just to grind their hips together again. One, two, three, four times (Lorena moaned, every time), as if testing how real their accomplishment was, or to carve this state of being into their bodies’ sense-memories and say, ‘you did this once: you can do it again’. _Then_ he pulled out three-quarters of the way and guided his second penis between her throbbing lips.

It took a moment – they didn’t want to dislodge his other member, this angle was obviously unfamiliar to him, and Lorena’s helping hand, spreading herself wide, only seemed to fluster him more – but soon enough the soft, pointed tip of him caught on her entrance and dipped out of sight. Lorena didn’t care what a cliché it was (or why it would take two dicks for the feeling to show up): as he squeezed the second one in along with the first, filling her front _and_ back, the stretch not even burning but only warming her from the inside out, it really did feel like him coming home. Like time and tide had taken him on a great journey and only now returned him to her.

But that would have to wait. Shallow as it was, his first thrust once he was anchored inside her already took her breath away. And he wasn’t faring any better. His eyes were screwed shut, his mouth slack and open.

"A minute," he said, voice thick and accent thicker. "I need a minute. Mmng. You’re so warm, so tight, so – _fuck, Lorena_ –"

He lost his grasp of English for a bit.

Leaving aside the kind of language he was obviously spewing, Lorena’s parents had never bothered to teach her Croatian properly, and she had always dawdled on pursuing it on her own. This settled it. She _was_ going to learn it. Paint-peeling filth and sappy endearments first.

She took the opportunity to lower her leg from his shoulder and wrap her thighs around his waist at last. She’d been bracing herself on the rock, and not getting to touch or hold onto him had been maddening. Garcia seemed to have the same idea. As soon as he could keep his eyes open again, he descended on her like a wave and claimed her mouth with his own. Ecstatic, she wrapped her arms around his neck.

Then his hips hitched, and she mewled into his mouth. One last nip to her lower lip, and he pushed back up a ways to give himself room to move.

Every circuit of his hips punched the breath out of her. She was so slick, and yet so _full_. He dragged along every nerve until it glowed with pleasure and heat. His shallow thrusts didn’t stay so for long. She opened up for him all over again, and soon his movements were smooth and deep. He pistoned into her like they’d been doing this for years. She urged him along, ankles locked behind his back and her thighs flexing right along with him. He wouldn’t last much longer, Lorena could tell. But that was fine. At the rate this was going, neither could she.

"Don’t stop," she urged, begged, and reached for her clit.

Biting her lip, she keened and bucked up into his thrusts and chased after all the sensation she could stand and then some. Her breasts, spilling from her top and pebbled in the cool night air, jiggled freely with every jerk of her body. Her bikini bottoms were still dangling from one leg. She was – _they_ were so slick she could practically smell it. Garcia’s twin shafts, penetrating her ever deeper, were separated by only a thin layer of flesh inside her. She wouldn’t have thought it possible before tonight, but she swore she could feel them rubbing against each other _through her_ , naturally angled to fit the body of a mermaid together with no barriers separating them.

Lorena let go of his neck to press a hand down on her belly. Breathless but delighted laughter burst from her lips. Distracted, Garcia gave her a puzzled look.

"Do you feel it?" Lorena asked. "Gods and goddesses, that’s _you_."

She pushed harder, palm flat and fingers splayed, and didn’t let up again, not while she could still feel him moving inside her through _this_ layer _too_. He filled her up completely, fulfilled every physical need she had in that moment, completed her utterly. The sensation was overwhelming, the experience unprecedented.

Shaking his head with an incredulous laugh, he pumped into her with abandon, harder and faster, chasing his climax. Lorena rubbed herself more vigorously. Both her holes clenched around him as her pleasure peaked and spun out. She cried out her release, utterly incapable of holding it back or caring how far the sound might carry across the water anymore. Sounding like she was punching him in his own pleasure center, Garcia kept pounding her through the shockwaves of her orgasm, drawing it out and pushing it even higher as he pressed deeper and deeper.

Finally he bottomed out once again, and as if that was all it took, like flipping a switch, he came. Both penises buried inside her to the hilt, he froze and shuddered against her. Lorena could _feel_ him ejaculate. A hot, forceful squirt like nothing she’d never experienced before, coating her inner walls for a good half minute. Must be another one of those underwater advantages, she thought deliriously.

Garcia collapsed on top of her, utterly spent. Not much better off herself, it was all Lorena could do to throw an arm around his waist and nuzzle her face into his. His shaky hand found hers and squeezed weakly. Tangled up in each other, they caught their breaths and waited for strength to return to their limbs.

Eventually, when he’d gone soft and slipped out of her, when she’d painstakingly straightened her legs, when he’d shifted his weight off her and to the side with all the grace of an actual beached whale, Lorena looked down at their crotch areas and made her most faux-horrified face. She put the back of her hand to her forehead like a Victorian lady in a faint, rolled the rest of the way out from underneath him, and kept rolling until she disappeared over the edge of their rock with a splash. Garcia lost it and followed her into the water through the sheer, convulsive force of his laughter.

At Garcia’s urging, Lorena draped herself over the edge of the rock for a while to soak her nethers. Merman sperm wasn’t _quite_ like human sperm, and he feared she might be feeling his presence all the way back to America before it washed off, but the salt water should help. Probably. (If it didn’t, he offered to go to the apothecary for a potion to pour in her bath water later. It was popular in coastal regions, they even made it scented. She could only imagine how red his face must be.)

Secretly, Lorena hoped it wouldn’t, and had half a mind not to. But he looked so apologetic and regretful about getting swept up in the heat of the moment and forgetting to warn her about the sticky factor, she couldn’t bear to refuse.

Looking as drowsy as she felt, Garcia swayed on the waves beside her, holding himself in place with an arm curled loosely around her waist. His genitalia had retreated back into his slit, and his slit was back to being indistinguishable from the rest of his scales. Lorena lazily swung her bikini bottoms from her finger, and she hadn’t tucked away her breasts yet. A part of her that was only fading very, very slowly, kind of wanted to go for another round. Most other parts of her insisted that he should carry her to a bed and have a nap with her first, possibly one that lasted the whole night, but still. She wanted there to be no doubt about how he made her feel.

A song bubbled up into Lorena’s mind. Wagging her bikinied finger to the beat, she started humming.

"Is that Grease?" Garcia asked, lifting his ears up out of the water.

"You know Grease?"

"I’m European, not a cave troll. Of course I know Grease," he said, and Lorena yelped in surprise when he playfully slapped her ass with his fins. She whirled around, ready to retaliate, but he grinned cheekily as he straightened up, cupped her buttocks in both hands, and rubbed soothingly.

Then he sang, _"She swam by me, she got a cramp,"_ which was practically an invitation for payback – of a much funner kind than splashing him or pulling his fishtails.

 _"He ran by me, got my suit damp,"_ she sang back, pulling up one of the cups of her bikini top and letting it snap back over her breast.

With an excellent rendition of a movie casanova’s ‘why you gotta do me dirty like that, girl?’ face, he went on: _"I saved her life, she nearly drowned."_

 _"He showed off, splashing around,"_ she replied, other cup snapping back into place.

Barely wobbling in their chorus, they managed _"Summer sun, something’s begun, but uh-oh those summer nights. Uh well-a well-a well-a huh!"_ before Lorena trailed off into laughter.

Garcia made it through _"Tell me more, tell me more, was it love at first sight?"_ without her, but then he too dissolved into tired giggles, and they kissed.

"Yes, it was," she whispered against his lips.

"For me too," he said.

She could spend the rest of her life kissing him. He wound his hand into her hair, and they made a decent go for it.

Eventually, though, the water got too cold for her, so she climbed out, slipped on her bikini bottoms, and gingerly clambered across the rocks back to the beach. Garcia swam around the rocks and followed her from the water until she found where they’d left their clothes.

Arm in arm, they walked up the boulevard and made their way into town.

"You know," Lorena said quietly. "Grease had a happy ending, but she had to come over all the way from Australia first."

"I’ve always liked to travel," Garcia said immediately. Then, more slowly, after nudging her chin up and stroking her cheek: "And I really, really like you."

Biting her lip and closing her eyes, Lorena nuzzled into the warmth of his hand. "Come with me to my room tonight. I don’t want to have to go all across town to make love to you again tomorrow morning."

"Okay."

When it came time for Lorena to return to the States, Garcia drove her to the airport and waved her goodbye. He’d already left a message on her answering machine when she came home. She couldn’t have thought of a lovelier, more comforting note to end her journey on.

Three days later, her doorbell rang and she took that thought back. There he was: in the flesh, with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, a hideous red-white-and-blue cowboy hat on his head, and his eyes alight at the sight of her.

Their journey hadn’t ended. It was just beginning.


End file.
